Year: 2018
Type: article
Abstract: Films produced during the last two decades in the post-Yugoslav states 1 often deal with the subject of these states' recent history, focusing on the war and its consequences for human beings, as well as the consequences of political and economic transition, such as an increasing wealth gap, criminality, lack of perspectives, unemployment etc.The methods of presentation and modality range from the serious to the comical and grotesque.As these films reflect in special ways people's new situation in the new post-Yugoslav countries, questions of self-image, understanding of oneself and of the cruel experiences of war are of utmost importance.The cultural, psychological and political positions of the countries that formerly belonged to Yugoslavia came into new focus with the fall of the Iron Curtain and the breakup of Yugoslavia, while the relationship between East and West staggered and required repositioning.However, in this time the political, economic and psychological situation of the West, especially of Central Europe, also changed fundamentally; this was noticed from outside, from the regions affected by war and poverty as a result of closing their borders.2 Cultural studies, history and anthropology, and to a certain degree also literature, noticed this tense relationship between Eastern and Western influences as basic for the Western understanding of the Balkans as the (European) East and Orienta 3 ; and the self-understanding of the Balkans as exotic.4 In these works the border between East and West is not understood as fixed or as a binary opposition, but rather as a fluid phenomenon Renate Hansen-Kokoruš works as a professor of Slavic literatures and cultures at the Institute for Slavic Studies at the University of Graz, Austria.She studied at the University of Mannheim (Germany), the University of Sarajevo (Bosnia & Hercegovina, then Yugoslavia), and the State University of Moscow (Russia, then USSR) and received their PhD and habilitation in Slavic Studies from the University of Mannheim.She worked in Sarajevo at the German department and in Mannheim at the Slavic department.She is director of the Institute of Slavic Studies and coeditor of the Anzeiger für Slavische Philologie. 1 The term "Balkan cinema" introduced by Dina Iordanova (in Iordanova, Dina.2001.Cinema of Flames.Balkan Film, Culture and the Media.London: Palgrave Macmillan) is much broader, because it also concerns Romanian, Greek, Bulgarian, Turkish and other cinemas of Southeast Europe, which do not constitute a single cinema tradition.Even if it is not used in a pejorative sense, implied by the term "the Balkans" (cf.Todorova, Maria N. 1997.Imagining the Balkans.New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press.); the term "Balkan cinema" will be avoided for the abovementioned reasons; nevertheless, this is not connected to the problem of the image of the self, of "self-balkanization" (cf.Bakić-Hayden, Maria.1995.Nesting Orientalisms.The Case of former Yugoslavia.Slavic Review 54(4), 917-31), but should consider the objectives of commonalities and differences.2 Loshithky names the tension of excluding migrants from Europe "Fortress Europe," in Loshitzky, Yosefa.2010.Screening Strangers.Migration and Diaspora in Contemporary European Cinema.
Author: Hansen-Kokoruš, Renate
Language: English
Topic: Cinema History and Criticism
Subfield: Visual Arts and Performing Arts
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2805280010